How do you get people to eat more fruit and less junk food? How do you get more people to agree to donate their organs? How do you get more people to engage in cross-border mediation? I’ll come back to food and organs shortly. Let’s stay with mediation for a minute. Within Asia, Hong Kong,…

Recently my good friend Canon Andrew White (aka “the Vicar of Baghdad”, as he is the Anglican priest at St George’s Church, Baghdad) convened a meeting of religious certain leaders from Iraq and Israel, bringing together senior Iraqi Muslim and Israeli Jewish figures in Cyprus for several days of talks about peace. It was by…

Regular readers of this blog may recall my 10 tips for participants who took part in the recent ICC Commercial Mediation Competition held in Paris – a wonderful time was had by all but that’s for another post. One of those tips was about keeping it real and suggesting a ‘steel fist inside a velvet glove’…

The year is nearly over, and here in the West of Ireland it is cold, wet windy and dark for what seems like most of the day, so I think it is time for a little moan about the frustrations those of us working particularly in family mediation are experiencing. (I promise I’ll start 2014…

Mediators deal in words – not exclusively, but a great deal (and perhaps sometimes too much, but that’s another blog). So it pays for us to think carefully about what words really mean. A couple of years ago, I came across an article entitled “US facilitation yes, mediation no: Omar”. It detailed how Pakistan, through…

This week I spoke to a group of young legal practitioners here in New Zealand. I aimed low and went back to source. I suspect I got more of a kick out of it than anyone at the session. So, mediators, look away. There is nothing new here. But users, occasional or repeat, I hope these three…

This is the third in a series of four postings written by Irena Vanenkova, Tina Monberg, Nadja Alexander and Michael Leathes. The previous posts appeared on the 17th and 20th August on the Kluwer Mediation Blog. Previously we noted that the UN and world political leaders increasingly perceive mediation as vital for avoiding and resolving…

Last winter, Rick Weiler and I posted comments on this blog on a mediation success story when the NHL Lockout dispute was successfully resolved. Reporting on the commencement of that mediation, Rick wrote: “one thing for sure, given hockey’s near sacred status in Canada, all eyes will be on this mediation. It may provide a…

This is the final posting of a 3-part series. Previous posts in the series noted the gathering tempest being whipped up by opacity in ADR practice. How can structural change help the ship steer towards modernity? User demand for more information and higher professional standards in ADR is unequivocal. An international institution is needed to…